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Many places seek to enhance themselves with art, but few are so compellingly kooky as Truth or Consequences. This desert town of hot springs and 1950s-era billboards, on the banks of the Rio Grande 150 miles south of Albuquerque, is home to a growing community of artists and eco-seekers all following—to some degree—the Ur-example of the original New Mexico artist-settler, Georgia O’Keeffe. Being an artist here, says art elder and celebrated painter Delmas Howe, is akin to living in the Galápagos. “It allows us to develop our own vision.” But, he adds, “it’s a vision that doesn’t necessarily put us into the mainstream.”

Artist Sky Premgyan and one of her creations. Photographs by Karen Kuehn.

Evidently, T or C has never been mainstream. To the Spanish it was Las Palomas del Ojo Caliente—Doves of the Hot Springs—and an Apache stronghold to be avoided; in the late 19th century it was known as Geronimo’s hometown, and by the early 20th as the original Las Vegas—a place of speakeasies and brothels for men working on nearby Elephant Butte Dam.

To Ralph Edwards, the radio and TV host, it was the town that took up the offer: he would do his program from the first town that renamed itself after the show. Hot Springs took on the new name, and in exchange, Edwards came to the town’s annual fiesta, bringing with him Hollywood starlets, including Jayne Mansfield, and, on one occasion, an elephant. “He came until they had to prop him up in the car,” recalls Howe. And that’s not all—the town may soon play a part in a 21st-century space race if it is chosen as the R&R site for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, set to begin blasting off from the nearby spaceport in 2009. we can go there from here! proclaims a billboard on the highway.

Delmas Howe’s painting studio.

T or C is a good place to focus, says cartoonist Bret Berman, owner of one of the town’s few cappuccino machines, located in a bank most likely built by the uncle of Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather Conrad Hilton. “You have to learn to amuse yourself here,” he offers. “It’s an hour’s drive to somewhere happening—and Las Cruces isn’t exactly happening.”

But there’s more to do than watch turkey buzzards play overhead—you can dance to a Mexican band at the Pine Knot, dine at the 60s steak house Los Arcos, visit ghost towns, soak in the baths at the Sierra Grande, browse for art in a dozen galleries, and still have time to fantasize. “The whole Twilight Zone thing keeps us inspired,” says painter Susan Koenick, who moved from New York five years ago and now runs a vintage-clothing store, Dust & Glitter.

T or C may not have the institution-backed heft of Marfa, Texas, home to the Chinati and Donald Judd foundations, but it is still serious about self-expression. The artist community recently fought off a Christian-fundamentalist-backed ordinance to outlaw the display of art created with “prurient interest in mind”—i.e., nudity. At the other extreme is Q, a self-styled artist-magician who says—cosmically speaking—“I receive information here I can’t get anywhere else on the globe.” In Truth or Consequences, a town on the edge in almost every respect, that’s probably true.

Edward Helmore is based in New York as a correspondent for London’s Observer.